Comments on: Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chassehttp://boingboing.net/2013/03/06/alien-boy-the-life-and-death.html
Brain candy for Happy MutantsMon, 15 Sep 2014 23:11:17 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2By: ChickieDhttp://boingboing.net/2013/03/06/alien-boy-the-life-and-death.html#comment-1673024
Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:07:00 +0000http://boingboing.net/?p=216974#comment-1673024I have strong feelings about these issues. My stepson was mentally ill and during his teen years I was involved in having him hospitalized several times. In the state where we lived at the time to involuntarily admit someone they had to go to the mental hospital in shackles. He was a very sensitive kid and it was heartbreaking to have him be tackled by grown men and put into chains. However, given how out of control he was, I understand why the police needed to do this for their own safety, and agreed with the policy as a general course of action.

The mentally ill should not be handled by the police, but by people trained to help them. I wish that we could find another way of offering help to families that need protection immediately from someone who is out of control, and I wish that our current system provided some real options rather than medicating on an emergency basis, then sending someone out of care without any followup.

I feel that the loving thing to do for someone who is mentally ill would be to force some kind of treatment on them; people who are mentally ill do not even recognize often that they are so out of the range of acceptable behavior. I’ve dealt with this as a stepmom and as a daughter. I know many people think that it is cruel to force treatment on someone, but having watched my father never have any ability to perceive how off his behavior is, I’d love at least once to put him into treatment and let him experience “normal” for once, and let him make his decision from that mental place instead of from craziness.